C-
Genre: Romantic Suspense, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Phyllis Laatsch. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Romantic Suspense category.
The summary:
Kait Winchester inherited a special gift from her Arapaho ancestors: she can heal with her touch. And there is no one she would like to get her hands on more than the super-sexy SEAL who seems determined to ignore their off-the-charts chemistry. When the wounded warrior finally seeks her help, she’s ready to nurse him back to health…and into her bed.
Navy SEAL Lieutenant Marcus “Cosky” Simcosky is no stranger to hot water, but recent events have boiled over into one hell of a mess. His team is under investigation for a hostage rescue gone wrong, a crazy female stalker is on his trail, and the last few bullets he took just may sideline him for the rest of his career. The kicker? The one woman who can help him get back on his feet—and has haunted his fantasies for years—is his teammate’s sister. He’s looked but never touched. When his stalker targets Kait, though, Cosky will have no choice but to do whatever is necessary to keep her safe.
Here is Phyllis Laatsch's review:
I almost stopped reading when I got to the end of Chapter One and found out the Heroine is half Arapaho and has Magic Native American healing powers.
Magic Indian!
I took a deep breath and gave it the benefit of the doubt. There are a lot of non-Magic-Indian paranormal elements in other novels, so it’s not always Magic Indians. In fact, the team leader Zane (the hero of Book 1 in this series) is not described in this book as any particular race and he has premonitions.
For the record, actual Native Americans aren’t huge fans of the Magic Indian cliché.
ANYWAY, I had promised to review the book and it wasn’t awful, so I kept reading.
And then there was a whole bunch of Magic Indian.
The Hero (Lt. Marcus “Cosky” Simcosky) and Heroine (Kait Winchester) have an unbreakable bond because they passed each other in a hallway five years ago and again more recently when she was magic-healing her brother in the hospital. Hero is obsessed about how she smells and has had sexy dreams about her for five years. Heroine can’t have a serious relationship because she compares all men to him. They walked past each other twice and have never spoken. Is it a Magic Indian thing?
“Many of the modern Arapaho people still possessed those warrior inclinations. Like her father and brothers.” Oh, good. Warrior Indians.
Heroine’s full brother and dad both have a Magic Indian gift for making money. No explanation as to why they don’t help their friends and family with their investments or raise money for good causes.
Hero wallows in jealousy because some dude named Wolf shows up to save him, Heroine, and the Crazy Stalker Woman they’ve captured. The reader already knows Wolf is the heroine’s half-brother and had a Magic Indian premonition, but for some reason, no one tells Our Hero or the SEAL team that for several chapters of useless and repetitive confrontations.
Wolf’s 100% Arapaho, which we’re not allowed to forget because he can’t utter a sentence without saying something in that language with no translation (or pronunciation guide). “Code-switching” doesn’t typically work that way, because generally, your conversational partner needs to know both languages, or otherwise, you’re undermining communication.
Wolf walks silently, hardly ever speaks, and has a premonition gift. He’s on an elite Special Forces team that speaks in Arapaho and saved the SEAL team once due to Magic-Indian ‘Knowing’.
Other problems:
Clichés: Hero doesn’t want a relationship with heroine because she would be a “complication” and would sit home worrying about him. Also, she’s his teammate’s sister and off limits for a “drive-by” affair. He’s a complete twatwaffle after they have sex for the first time when she’s giving him a healing massage. He’s sorry right away that he was such an ass, but figures he’ll call her with an apology, because if he goes in the same room with her, they might have more hot sex.
OH NO! NOT THE HOT SEX!
For the record, he does a decent grovel later.
Infodumps: They rescue/kidnap a scientist who is already thought to be dead because the bad guys blew up the lab. She tells the entire story about their amazing technology, harnessing the energy of the “universe or the solar system” which within a few pages sounds like some awesome solar panels. But someone very rich and powerful is willing to kill/kidnap scientists to destroy the tech and kill the SEALs and kill all the witnesses and kill kill kill. Good thing they had a plot puppet to tell the SEALs the backstory! And she’s a hot, young woman and sequel bait.
Minor detail problems: Crazy Stalker Woman is wearing a wool poncho (in the heat because she’s always cold and is crazy due to grief). That is then called cotton. And has a pocket for her gun…inside the poncho? Then it’s wool again. And is an overcoat. Later, it’s a “woolen cape or cloak or whatever it was” and by then I had thrown up my hands. No one ever mentions the color.
Words used wrong and wrong words used: Get a good proofreader. Trust your proofreader.
I might have let a lot of stuff skate if I hadn’t been so miffed by the Magic Indian and some details that threw me out of the story. I spent a long time thinking, “3 stars? 2 stars? 3? 2?” I finally decided on 2.75.
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2.75 sounds awfully generous to me. A mediocre book needs to have good grammar and accurate spelling to net a C for me. And zero magic Indians.
The grammar was fine, it was more a word choice problem. Since I live with a dyslexic, I can totally understand the problem (not that the author is dyslexic, just that I understand when you have the word in your head and can’t get it out of your mouth or on the page). Which is why I said you need a good proofreader.
Also, the book wasn’t as bad as the one I gave a D- to recently. Unremarkable, except for the negative things that bugged me, but not bad. About 3/4ths of the books I score on goodreads get 4 stars, because I am, sometimes, too nice. Call it grade inflation, but B is my median, mode, and mean.
The first was not so bad, but with strange premonition powers with no explanation, and insta-love. I wanted to read this one but I think I’ll pass.
Well, thank you for letting me know I never want to read this book.
Have to admit, 2.75 seems generous to me also for the simple reason it sounds as if some judicious editing would have revealed the flaws in the storyline you reveal. I don’t understand how such badly written stuff gets published. I know a couple of much better writers struggling to get their first story printed and none of their work has such gaping holes. And they know the difference between wool and cotton and remember if their villainess is wearing a poncho or an overcoat.
Then, seems to me the power of the universe would be a lot stronger than the mere power of the solar system, just going by the difference in size.
One of my serious pet peeves is the penchant for writing a series rather than writing a good story. Ok, I like a good series as much as the next person. I’ve waited breathless for the next installment of Outlander over the years, for instance. But those are well-written books. This business of using one volume as a set-up for the next in the series without doing justice to the story at hand ticks me off.
You want my money? Write a good story.